Can You Re-Use Classico Pasta Sauce Jars?

Classico pasta sauce is one of the most popular jarred Italian sauces on the market, although there are several better alternatives. However, it’s not just the taste that attracts people to this brand, it’s the jar. Classico uses mason jars, famed for home canning. Thus, Classico pasta sauce jars seem perfect for reuse. So, can you reuse these jars?

Atlas Mason Jars From Classico

The truth is that whether or not to reuse Classico mason jars depends on what you want to reuse them for. The jars used by Classico are not the type of mason jars you’d buy for home canning. These jars are stamped Atlas Mason, recalling an actual mason jar company that no longer exists called Hazel-Atlas, whose jars were stamped Atlas.

Can Classico Jars Be Used For Canning?

However, the jars Classico uses are not real mason jars and are NOT intended for home canning. The jars being stamped Mason Atlas has more to do with marketing than anything else. They are lighter than actual mason canning jars, although the seals and rings for mason jars will fit on them.

Therefore, you should NOT use empty Classic jars for home canning! However, they certainly are suitable for short-term storage of any number of foods or liquids.

Classic Jars Are Great For Storing Just Not Canning

You can of course store dry goods in them to your heart’s content. Just make sure they are clean. The lid design provides a good, airtight seal.

And, you can store liquid items for a short time in the refrigerator. For example, say you need to make a small batch of powdered milk. You could use an old Classico “mason” jar for this purpose. Basically, you can use a Classico jar for anything you might re-use a commercial jar for, besides canning, and since the lid design is more secure, they will work quite well.

To be clear, Classico says do not re-use them for home-canning. They say nothing of general re-use for non-canning purposes:

Can I reuse the Classico® jar for home canning? No. A coating is applied at the glass plant to reduce scratching and scuffing. If scratched, the jar becomes weaker at this point and can more easily break. This would increase the risk of the jar breaking when used for canning. Also, the lighter weight of our current jar could make it unsafe for home canning.

Classico jars may not seem particularly light and fragile when you handle them, but if you compare an empty Classico jar to an actual mason jar, such as a Ball mason jar of the same size, you will notice a difference in heft and you’ll be able to tell that the glass is indeed thicker.

Classico Jars Are Popular For Canning

According to some sources, such as HealthyCanning.Com older Classico jars, used during the 1980s and into the ’90s, were made of thicker glass but the fact that they were thicker still doesn’t mean they were suitable for canning, and there is no evidence that they ever used actual canning jars.

It does appear, however, that both the old and new jars are popular for canning. Since the glass was not manufactured and tempered in the same way as a true canning jar, all bets are off as to how well they will hold up under extreme heat and pressure.

If you use a Classico jar for canning and it fails, don’t blame Classico. As far as general re-use, I use them all the time. They are great for storing small non-food items as well.

If you do a lot of canning then finding jars to re-use is a good idea. You can often find mason jars at garage sales, thrift stores, and flea markets. Don’t re-use the seals and lids, to be safe. If you are just getting started, basic home canning supplies are not all that expensive.

Does It Depend on the Brand?

Whenever the subject of reusing commercial pasta sauce jars comes up, you can almost guarantee someone will chime in with: “Well, it depends on the brand.” The thinking usually goes something like this: Classico might tell you not to reuse their jars, but maybe a higher-end, artisan, or store brand uses “real” canning glass that can handle the pressure. The short answer is no. It does not depend on the brand.

No commercial pasta sauce company, whether budget or ultra-premium, is packaging their sauce in true home-canning jars. To think differently is to misunderstand the commercial realities of food packaging. Real home canning jars (like Ball or Kerr) are thick, heavy, and engineered to endure repeated, violent thermal shock cycles. In commercial manufacturing, freight shipping is charged by total weight. Thicker glass means heavier pallets, fewer cases per truck, higher fuel costs, and eroded profit margins. No commercial packer is going to foot the bill to ship extra pounds of tempered glass just to give you a free, reusable canning vessel.

Commercial food processors all source their glass from the same industrial container manufacturers (such as Owens-Illinois or Ardagh). These jars are engineered to survive one high-speed automated bottling line, withstand one commercial steam retort or hot-fill cycle, sit safely on a shelf, and be opened by the consumer. They are single-use packaging containers, not multi-cycle pressure vessels. That withstanding, sure you can re-use them for things other than canning.

The “Mason” Look Is Just Inexpensive Branding

Other brands have copied the square silhouette, embossed measurements, and vintage lettering popularized by Classico. Adding embossed markings or vintage script to a commercial glass mold costs essentially nothing during production, but it adds instant rustic, “homemade” shelf appeal. It’s nothing more than marketing aesthetics and does not indicate stronger glass or tempering.

If a jar of pasta sauce was processed, sealed, and sold on a supermarket shelf, it’s the same as any other food-packaging jar. It doesn’t matter if the label is cheap, expensive, or embossed with measurement lines. There is no such thing as a commercial food-packaging jar that is suitable for home canning.